Electronic commerce (“eCommerce”) has proliferated over the Internet recently. One difficulty in eCommerce is handling payment processes. Presently, in Business-to-Consumer (“B2C”) eCommerce, credit card payment and debit settlement are common methods of payment where the price of goods or services are relatively low. Business-to-Business (“B2B”) eCommerce and some high dollar transactions in the B2C eCommerce, e.g., cars or furniture, however, can involve significantly higher dollar transactions than in the lower dollar B2C eCommerce. Thus, in those cases credit card payments and debit settlements are often inappropriate or unavailable. To date, the payment and credit mechanisms utilized in B2B eCommerce transactions have followed the same model as with non-eCommerce transactions. That is, to extend credit the seller evaluates the buyers credit rating and offers from zero or several credit offerings.
The buyer either then selects one credit offering from the seller or obtains a loan from a third-party lender. Traditionally, large sellers only sell to large buyers in bulk with no little or no credit extension. Thus, small buyers' offers to buy small quantities from large sellers are typically rejected by the large seller. This is often because the small buyer requires credit and the large seller does not wish to extend credit since it would result in carrying accounts receivable for numerous small buyers. All of this credit offering determination and selection is manpower and time intensive, thus greatly slowing the speed of the transaction. Also, if the buyer is not satisfied with the credit offerings of the seller, the buyer has little or no choice to easily, quickly, and conveniently secure other credit options.
Accordingly, there is a need for an automated credit evaluation, automated credit terms matching, and automated buyer selection and offering acceptance process which better matches the Internet's faster transaction capabilities and otherwise overcomes the above-described deficiencies. The method and system of the invention described herein provides such a solution.